Busy as a Bee

maybe it doesn't exactly mean what we've always been taught it means

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I’ve always been sort of a results-oriented person. We live in sort of a results-oriented world! Most of us, most of the time, are trying to figure out how to fit more of the things we need to do, and more of the things we want to do, into days that always contain a maddeningly fixed number of available hours to do them in.

We think of bees as busy, don’t we? Ants, too. Because we see them constantly active. And we know that all of their individual, constant, very busy activities are always in contribution to the daily operation and success of the entire colony. They’re getting stuff DONE! 🐝

But do you know, all they are really doing is just exactly what they are meant to be doing, at any given moment?

They don’t make schedules and set objectives and track completion. They don’t work overtime. They don’t come in early or stay late to catch up on a few things. They gather all day long, and at the end of the day, no matter how much they have or have not gathered, they come in for the night.

Bees don’t have quotas. In our busy world, the things that we don’t finish today often shift to tomorrow, and it can sort of feel like your work doesn’t count when you’re just trying to get caught up to what you’re supposed to be working on right now.

A single bee may visit over a thousand blossoms in a day, but no one’s keeping score. Every flower counts, completely, one by one, at the single moment that it is visited. No flower is ever written off as a deficit from yesterday whose only purpose is to get back on track for today.

The very busiest of bees are only ever doing everything that they do, one thing at a time, until they are done. In that sense, they are no more, and no less, busy than sloths! Each doing exactly what they are meant to be doing, right now, without measuring results or feeling like they’re falling behind or scrambling to get ahead.

Have you ever felt that singular peace that comes with knowing that you are doing just exactly what you are supposed to be doing in a given moment?

That feeling, and that moment, are entirely independent of what the rest of the world might define as results. They are just simply valuable, in and of themselves. I felt this way when I was driving my oldest son back and forth to an internship at the Downeast Institute marine biology research facility, before he got his license.

Commuting can often feel like a giant waste of time, and we can wonder how to fill those driving minutes with something value-added, or think about the other things we could be getting done if we weren’t stuck in the car.

But this opportunity was so uniquely suited to my son’s interests and his hopes to pursue marine biology in college, so serendipitous in our little under-served rural Maine community, that I just knew that every minute I spent driving him back and forth already had its own value that needed nothing else added. Like a bee, at a blossom, very busy about its whole purpose, the world distilled down to one thing to do at one time.

So be busy as a bee. No more artificial constructs stipulating the maximization of tasks crammed in and checked off within the confines of any given day. Be as busy as a bee by tuning in to just what you’re meant to be doing, right now, moment by moment :)

Does your meant-to-be look like finding the right flower, or gathering nectar, or taking stock of where the sun is, or sharing directions with the hive, or caring for your hive mates? So many possibilities, and each of them as essential and valuable as the last!

Our meant-to-bes will look quite different whether we are a bee, or a sloth, or a person making our way through this world. But we will certainly all be better off for noticing them and appreciating them for what they are - instead of measuring them and comparing them against what someone told us they ought to be!